Manhattan Episode 2 Recap: The Dragon's Breath

Given a second chance to design an imploding bomb, Frank Winter still has to grapple with betraying Sid Liao.

Packed inside a metal vial, which is packed inside a wooden box, which is wrapped in cloth and tucked inside a crate of Valencia oranges, is the special delivery that sets the second episode of Manhattan in motion. About 150 grams of plutonium-239—an ultra-rare radioactive isotope in high demand, has arrived at Los Alamos all the way from Chicago. By taxicab.

Researcher Frank Winters, along with his group pursuing a bomb design with an imploding core, has been reinstated and allowed to continue their research. But to prove that their design works, they'll need to get their hands on some plutonium, which Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer hasn't rationed to them. Also, Sid Liao (accused in the pilot episode of being a spy) is still missing, and only Frank seems to have any plans on how to solve either of these problems. Reed Akley, whose team is designing a bullet style bomb, is going to hand over the plutonium—"he just doesn't know it yet," Frank says.

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Frank's plan to get his hands on some plutonium is more fully formed than his plan to help Liao, who is being interrogated by a man who can only be identified by the designation on his security badge, "X-4." The scheme simple enough: have Helen, the woman in his group, seduce one of the men in Akley's group and gain access to the locked laboratory where it's being kept.

That man in Akley's group turns out to be Charlie Isaacs, who's easily flattered by women from his home state of Missouri who will tell him he's not a pretentious prick. After feeding him a line about missing the chance to pick up the plutonium because she was trying to call her boyfriend (which may or may not have been sincere), Charlie offers to unlock the lab holding the bomb juice. But as they're extracting some of the plutonium and making crude calculations of the force of gravity on Superman's home planet, Krypton, Winter's group is caught. Frank has to hash out this transgression of laboratory etiquette with one of his higher-ups, the Hungarian scientist Alek Barrath.

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Despite his underhanded ploy, an opportunity opens up for Frank in his mediation with Barrath and Akley: If he can show implosion is more than just another one of his unproven theoretical contributions to physics, Akley will play nice and share.

Oh Brother, Where Art Liao?

While things looking up for his former colleagues, things are not looking good for Sidney Liao. He's been stashed in a dark room for questioning by X-4, an organization that isn't with the FBI, nor the G-2s, nor the Men in Black. Liao, X-4 tells him, "is nowhere talking to nobody," so his right to an attorney doesn't exist; Los Alamos is essentially living under the Patriot Act 60 years before it will be written. The best Liao can do is give X-4 what he wants, which doesn't seem to be the sob story about why those documents went missing. X-4 wants something else: dirt on Frank Winter.

In the meantime, Frank has figured out a way to both help Liao out and help Col. Alden Cox flex his brass on the base. What Frank hasn't figured out is how to be anything but a gruff S.O.B. This is especially problematic because his wife, Liza, has just invited Charlie and Abby over for dinner. Having already rejected Charlie's graduate thesis for publication and now using the young scientist in his plutonium scheme, Frank is on strike two. Charlie, not content to simply call Frank out for being selfish, tells him he's a dinosaur who is bringing down an entire group of young physicists. "I'm the meteor who is going to make you go extinct," Charlie says. It turns out he actually can be a pretentious prick. For this, Frank throws Charlie's hat and coat out into the street, without even a "don't let the door hit your ass." Liza is not pleased.

Blowing Things Up

Soon, the Winter group is given their chance to prove that they can compress plutonium into a small enough space to make it go critical and start a chain reaction. To do this, they'll need to use conventional explosives packed around a two-foot long pipe to compress the metal into the size of a cigar. Out in the desert, they begin setting up. A crowd gathers, including Charlie, who seems eager to watch them fail.

Almost as soon as Frank gets there, though, an Army jeep pulls up and tells Frank he needs to come with them. Frank's plan to help Liao has worked, it seems, and he needs to see him before Liao is shipped off to boot camp on his way to the Pacific Theater. Frank, inspired by seeing an MP who wanted to be transferred to an action zone, has convinced Col. Alden Cox to take Liao out of enhanced interrogation — a room with bright lights and blaring music — and put him in the Army, to prove he's not a spy. Frank rushes into Liao's holding cell and tells him how to get assigned as a radio operator and avoid the front lines.

But in his attempt to avoid Liao's questions about how he was betrayed, Frank lets slip that the band has gotten back together. Liao realizes it was Frank who sold him out to save "his baby," the implosion device.

Frank rushes back to the desert test range to tend to that baby. Angered, Liao asks for X-4. He's ready to talk about Frank Winter.

Frank's jeep approaches the test site right as it goes off. The experiment is a resounding failure. Dr. Barrath, the Hungarian, is not pleased. Who would have guessed that several blocks of TNT could rip a pipe to shreds? If Frank's group is to prove that they can compress plutonium with explosives, they'll have to get a bit smarter about it. In the aftermath, Charlie finds a page of Frank's notes and seems intrigued by the equations scrawled on it.

Back at base camp, Liao has decided that instead of ratting on Winter, he's going to do something even more drastic and make a run for it. Luring an MP into the cell, Liao disarms him and takes off in a car. But he's held up by a security checkpoint and without his badge, he's not going anywhere. Worse for him, he's been found out and X-4 is making calls to send Los Alamos into lockdown mode. As Liao sits nervously at the gate, trying to coax the guard to let him pass, the phone at the MP station starts to ring. That same MP who inspired Frank to get Liao drafted into the Army pulls out his side arm and inexplicably blasts poor Liao through the temple.

The scenes from next week hint that this shooting will become a point of contention between the scientists and the GIs in Los Alamos, but it's a vexing cliffhanger on which to end.